Thursday 31 March 2011

NFC for my mobile apps – how much does implementation cost and is it difficult?

NFC has been around since 2003 but it´s not until now that technology and adoption are ready for commercial deployment. Google plans to embed NFC in the Nexus S, RIM in all their new devices and Apple want to equip the iPhone 5 with an NFC chip, despite rumours they would not. Nokia launches a series of devices including NFC, starting with the C7 and most other handset manufacturers will include NFC in their devices within the next 2 years.

According to Wikipedia: “Near field communication, or NFC, is a set of short-range wireless technologies, typically requiring a distance of 4 cm or less. (...) This enables NFC targets to take very simple form factors such as tags, stickers, key fobs, or cards that do not require batteries. NFC peer-to-peer communication is also possible, where both devices are powered.”

The technology will enable lots of new exciting mobile interactions. The main focus is on mobile payments. A complex eco-systems and infrastructures of mobile payments makes it more likely that the utilization will be in other areas first such as loyalty cards, identification, as travel tickets, enterprises and potentially micro-payments for vending machines.

What is the cost of implementing NFC in your mobile applications?

Android and Symbian already support NFC. iOS and other mobile OS are expected to add support this year. This means the implementation of the service on the application side is fairly straight forward. Make a call to the API to read a Tag (the target device) and then there is an open communication channel between the two NFC chips for whatever the desired interaction is.

Examples could include
a)      Identifying a certain customer as having been in the store
b)      Registering a discount coupon from a mobile app in a store
c)       Checking in at the airport
d)      Paying for a buss, taxi, tube, etc if the application is connected to a backend-server which supports this
e)      And a myriad of other things

This means that the cost of implementing NFC in an application is very small compared to the cost of setting up a backend which could be hundreds of millions for a full scale payment platform that replaces credit cards. A simple NFC solution which reads an
NFC chip once to authenticate that the user has been in a certain store or redeemed a voucher could cost as little as 10-20.000 Euros to implement.

So what’s next?

During the coming years we will see thousands of different applications including NFC. Some of those will be groundbreaking and others will quickly be forgotten. Banks, retailers, transportation businesses, fast food restaurants and event companies will all launch pilots and some full scale implementations but it’s likely to be an evolution that replaces plastic cards over time rather than a revolution.

Golden Gekko is currently working on NFC trials with a couple of clients so please contact us for more information: info (at) goldengekko.com

Tuesday 22 March 2011

Why did Facebook buy Snaptu for 70m USD?

In the current smartphone hype everybody focuses on iOS, Android and HTML5 when speaking about mobile applications. Many might therefore wonder why Facebook would spend 70m USD on acquiring a company that delivers mobile apps based on Java ME (J2ME). Facebook has a simple reason: 95% of all phones worldwide are still non-smartphones. According to Sun there are currently over 2.1Bn Java ME enabled devices worldwide. Of all phones sold worldwide in 2010, 81% were non-smartphones. Smartphones still make up a very small percentage of all mobile devices in emerging markets, where Facebook now has their greatest growth potential with well over a billion connected feature phones. Other big online companies such as eBay, Amazon and Yahoo have also acknowledged this and currently invest in similar technologies in order to position themselves among consumers before they have a chance to upgrade their phones.

At Golden Gekko we believe that Java ME still has another 3-5 years potential for brands that want to reach mass market penetration and low end devices across the globe. Last year, for example, the Java ME version of the Malibu Bowling Game had over 5 million downloads in total; 1,3 million from the independent app store Getjar.

This doesn’t mean that Java ME is for everyone but it’s definitely not dead. One of the challenges for app developer has been fragmentation across devices. This meant that you had to develop 100s of different versions. Today companies such as Snaptu, Mobile Distillery and Golden Gekko have solutions that make this much easier.

For more information about the potential of Java ME please contact Golden Gekko.

Thursday 17 March 2011

How much does it cost to develop a mobile website in XHTML and/ or HTML5?

One of the most frequent questions we get asked is:  what is the cost of developing a mobile website? The answer is simple: It varies almost as much as the cost of developing a website. The price ranges from a few hundred to millions of Euros, but we will try to give a more constructive answer:

The key factors are:

1. Content/Service
What is the purpose of the mobile website? Is it an e-commerce site, a landing page, a news site, a social network, etc?
How much content does it contain? One page or hundreds of pages? The scope of the mobile website will provide a good starting point for estimating the cost of development.

Cost Range
- For a very simple mobile website a tool such as Netbiscuits could be used. Such a solution would cost a few hundred Euros
- If your site is a blog, for example, then it's possible that a free Wordpress plugin could be used to mobilise your existing website
- If the site includes more advanced functionality, then it needs to be custom built. The cost for this usually starts around 10.000 Euros

2. Design
Another important factor is the user interface design. Creating user flows, wireframes, mockups and designs could take several weeks, and therefore costs money.
Depending on the target audience you might want to implement two versions of the site. One optimised for XHTML and one for HTML5 compatible devices. While HTML5 supports a much richer user experience including animations, audio and video; XHTML should be optimised for speed and easy navigation rather than contain lots of graphics.

Cost Range:
- A simple mobile website whose design could be just a sketch that takes an hour to create would cost less than 100 euro
- For a sophisticated m-commerce site, intended to generate millions in sales, the cost and effort could easily rise to tens of thousands of Euros. Experienced user interface designers in London or New York frequently charge day rates of 1000 Euros. You get what you pay for.

3. Usability
Ease of use is not only about user interface design. It is also a matter of building an information architecture that it easy to navigate and optimised for the key use cases. The site should be tested with users and constantly improved over time.

Cost Range:
- Delivering excellent usability is an integrated part of good mobile website development. This means the cost cannot be isolated. However, if you consider your site business critical then plan for at least 2 weeks of user testing and enhancements before launch. You won't regret it.

4. Device support
One of the greatest challenges with mobile is device fragmentation. There are 10+ operating systems, hundreds of browser versions, 20+ display resolutions and lots of exceptions to take into consideration.

In theory HTML5 should resolve some of these issues. Unfortunately the differences are so big that you need to test and optimise your HTML5 site for each of those platforms.

At Golden Gekko we believe in testing on as many target devices and OS versions as possible. This means anywhere between two for an iPhone optimised HTML5 site (OS4.x and OS3.x) and 200 devices for a site that targets a broad spectrum of mobile devices.

Cost Range:
- Platforms such as the GG Server Platform and Netbiscuits provide rendering capabilities that optimise the site for each device type. The cost ranges from about 100 euro per month up to thousands but the service is well worth the money
- The feature set may differ between devices. E.g. some devices such as iPhone 4 have excellent java script support while others do not. Therefore add at least one week extra development time beyond the first platform
- The cost of QA / Testing vastly depends on the desired device support ranging from about 500 euro for a few days of testing on one platform to 10.000 euro for 3 weeks of testing across 200+ devices.  

5. Search engine optimisation
One of the greatest advantages of a mobile website juxtaposed to a native app is that people can find the content on your site through search engines. All standard mobile websites can of course be crawled. Still, just like for the web, optimising the site for search engines can make an enormous difference.

Cost Range:
Search engine optimisations for a big mobile site costs between 3.000 and 6.000 Euros

6. Logging and Reporting
If you've invested lots of money in your mobile website you want to know how many visitors you attract. You are interested in where they come from, what they do, how long they stay, where they leave, when and how frequently they come, etc. Most mobile website tools provide some standard reporting services and stats but if you really want to understand the users and their usage patterns you might have to dig deeper and combine the data with other sources.

Cost Range:
- Standard reporting should be included in the development and hosting services for any mobile website project
- For customised logging the effort is usually one to two days to define the requirements and about one extra week to implement and test the logging

Summary:
So what is the total cost of developing a mobile website? Depending on what you what to do with it, user interface requirements, usability testing, device support, search engine optimisation and logging the cost could range from a few hundred Euros for a simple landing page to 100.000+ Euros for a complex m-commerce site.

Please don't hesitate to contact us for a quote specific to your requirements. info@goldengekko.com
www.goldengekko.com

Thursday 10 March 2011

Top 55 most downloaded Android Apps

Thanks to our wide range of services around mobile apps we frequently get asked: what are the most downloaded Android apps? We expected this to be an easy task to find out but realised: it is not.
Android Market presents the most popular apps but that evaluation is not based on all-time download numbers or even on the download numbers of the current month. App aggregation sites such as Appbrain.com, AndroidZoom, Androlib or AppstoreHQ do not present any top downloads stats at all. The site that delivers the most appropriate numbers is Cyrket but their stats seem to be at least 6 months old based on our research.
Therefore we hereby present a list of what we believe is the top 55 of most downloaded Android Apps.

All-time popular Android apps: 
  1. Facebook, Facebook (Free)
  2. Google Maps, Google (Free)
  3. Angry Birds, Rovio Mobile Ltd (Free)
  4. Pandora Radio, Pandora (Free)
  5. Talking Tom Cat Free, Outfit7 Ltd (Free)
  6. Handcent SMS, handcent_admin (Free)
  7. Advanced Task Killer, ReChild (Free)
  8. KakaoTalk, KakaoTalk (Free)
  9. Bubble Blast 2 Free, Magma Mobile (Free)
  10. Barcode Scanner, Zxing Team (Free)
  11. Shazam, Shazam (Free)
  12. Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Systems (Free)
  13. Google Sky Maps, Google Inc (Free)
  14. Lookout Mobile Security, Lookout Inc (Free)
  15. The weather Channel, The Weather Channel (Free)
  16. Slice It! ®, Com2uS (Free)
  17. Jewels, MH Games (Free)
  18. TweetCaster for Twitter, Handmark (Free)
  19. Astro File Manager, Metago (Free)
  20. Movies, Flixster (Free)
  21. Live Holdem Poker Pro, Dragonplay (Free)
  22. Robo Defense FREE, Lupis Labs Software (Free)
  23. Angry Birds Seasons, Rivio Mobile Ltd
  24. Alchemy, Andrey
  25. Twitter, Twitter
  26. Skype, Skype
  27. Paper Toss, Back Flip Studios Inc
  28. Gmail, Google Inc
  29. WhatsApp Messenger, WhatsApp Inc
  30. GasBuddy - Find Cheap Gas, Gasbuddy.com
  31. WeatherBug, WeatherBug Mobile
  32. Ringdroid, Ringdroid Team
  33. Google Translate, Google
  34. Solitaire, Ken Magic
  35. Bible, LifeChurch.tv
  36. Google Earth, Google
  37. TiKL - Touch to Talk (PTT), TiKL Inc
  38. Vaulty Free Hides Pictures, Threon Rogers
  39. Free Music Download, Jeromy.Y
  40. Evernote, Evernote Corp
  41. Zedge Ringtones & Wallpapers, Zedge
  42. MP3 Music Download, Hades Lab
  43. Backgrounds - 10.000 Wallpapers, girls2you.us
  44. Androidify, Google Inc
  45. Air Control Lite, Four Pixels
  46. GO Launcher EX, GO Launcher Dev Team
  47. Anti-Virus Free, AVG Mobilation
  48. ROM Manager, ClockworkMod
  49. Opera Mini web browser, Opera
  50.  ES File Explorer, EStrongs Inc.
  51. GO SMS, Go Dev Team
  52. doubleTwist Player, douleTwist
  53. Yahoo Mail!, Yahoo! Inc
  54. Streetview on Google Maps, Google
  55. Horoscope, Horoscope.fr
About the ranking: Since Google only presents indicative download numbers the list is based on the number of ratings (not the rating) for each app. This should be a very good indication based on our previous experience and benchmarking of our own apps as you can simple multiply the number of ratings with a number to get an indicative download number within +/- 10%. Therefore the ranking in the list is indicative and not absolute.

Wednesday 2 March 2011

The king of marketing Sir Martin Sorrell speaks about mobile in a keynote at MWC

It is always great to hear what the big boys have to say about the mobile world. Therefore, we were especially excited about Sir Martin Sorrell´s (CEO of WPP) speech at Mobile World Congress this year.

Here are a couple of the highlights:

- WPP sees huge potential for retailers and consumer brands to benefit from apps that tap into location and commerce. "Location targeting is the holy grail that we as advisers on behalf of our clients are looking for."

- "Applications will be a significant opportunity for retailers to open another virtual shop, with the added benefit of it being in consumers' pockets when they are out shopping."

- "Apps will always offer some features that mobile sites cannot, while remaining popular for regularly accessed content such as news, weather and train times."

- "It is likely that mobile apps will be the fat part of the curve in terms of usage, whereas the mobile internet will be the long tail."

It was refreshing to hear someone speak about the balance between apps and mobile websites, considering that marketers frequently take for granted that one will kill the other in a few years. Golden Gekko has always believed that they are complementary and don't compete. We recommend our clients  consider both channels, depending on target audience, richness and purpose.

The speech also highlighted that the industry is still in its fledging stages and major advertising groups such as WPP have barely dipped their toes in mobile yet.